


Thinking it Right (Doing it Wrong)

by RDcantRead



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Freddie is a Sweetheart, Friendship, Gen, Insecure Roger Taylor (Queen), Light Angst, Platonic Cuddling, Roger Taylor (Queen) Needs a Hug, Suicidal Ideation, planes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RDcantRead/pseuds/RDcantRead
Summary: Sometimes, Roger feels bad.And that's okay.





	Thinking it Right (Doing it Wrong)

Sometimes, Roger feels bad.

Not in a sick way, but just bad in general. It's not awful and it's not very serious (at least that's what he tells himself), he just lacks motivation for a few days (or weeks (or even months)). It's not a problem.

It's not a problem, so why is he making it one?

He's on a plane, and he's going to America, and he's pumped. One of his three emotions, happy, pumped and angry.

Queen has a concert tomorrow, and he's pumped. (He knows that he's lying to himself.)

He just... can't seem to want to get up, or play the drums, or sing, or do _anything_ really.

He's sitting in a plane, and his band mates are around him, and he's fine, he's excited and slightly nervous, but he knows that everything will be okay.

(Everything may be okay, but he isn't.)

Snores are coming from somewhere to his left, but he can't be bothered to look up and see whose they are. He just feels bad.

And that's okay. He's okay, he can do this, he just needs to be good enough to perform in front of thousands of people tomorrow. Thousands of people, who will be able to see that he isn't okay and that he's forcing himself to drum and sing and be there. Thousands of people who can hear that he's not hitting as hard, singing as hard. Thousands of people who came to a Queen concert to be bedazzled, not vaguely entertained.

(The thoughts circling in his brain aren't stopping anytime soon.)

He knows that normally, these thoughts would cause him to have some kind of anxiety attack, he knows that, he's had them before, often from similar thoughts, but he just can't be bothered. He doesn't care enough.

He knows that he isn't important anyway. And that's fine (it hurts deep inside). Long ago he accepted that drummers just aren't on the same level as other band members. There are no drummers who are frontmen. It just isn't possible to actually entertain an audience while being a drummer. Drummers aren't important.

He's replaceable.

He’s surprised it took this long to have this revelation, although, if he’s being honest, it’s always been there, he just always drowned his thoughts in booze and girls and more booze.

The plane goes through some serious turbulence, shaking Roger from his thoughts, and rousing Freddie from his much needed sleep. Instead of going back to dwelling in his head, Roger just stares out the window.

He isn’t thinking of anything, he’s just staring. Quiet. The clouds drifting past the window don’t distract him from getting lost, not in thought, but in quiet. Peacefulness. Roger isn’t associated with peacefulness in any capacity. He’s just too loud. Too turbulent. His wild mood swings don’t lend themselves to peacefulness, especially for extended periods of time.

He can hear Freddie moving about somewhere on the plane, he’s quiet, and he’s not saying anything, but the rustling of him moving about is distracting enough.

Roger wants to just tell him to be silent, but he can’t be bothered. It's too much work, and he isn’t even sure if his vocal chords would work. He’s been silent for so long.

He doesn’t know when he got lost in thought again, but he can no longer hear Freddie anywhere. He feels slightly relieved, but mostly lonely. And numb.

(He’s so lonely, all day, every day, for so long, he doesn’t know how to stop.)

He doesn’t remember correctly what it felt like not to be lonely, and he knows that when he stops feeling bad, he’ll forget what it was like to feel numb and dark and drifting.

(He’s drifting through life, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.)

He curses his own tendency when he’s feeling like this to get lost in his head. Lost looking at nothing, seeing nothing, just, existing.

He can hear Brian and John talking. He doesn’t hear what they’re talking about, but they aren’t trying to be quiet, not like Freddie was.

The plane lurches uncomfortably, but nothing changes. He’s still on a plane, flying to play a concert he doesn’t want to play. He can hear laughter, but he doesn’t want to join in, and he isn’t feeling up to socialising.

He can hear the signature rattling of Freddie’s scrabble board, and he desperately wants to want to join them, but he can’t. He’s not working correctly.

He’s malfunctioning. Or maybe he never worked in the first place. Maybe he was always broken and no one could be bothered to fix him. He want to want to have fun and joke around with his band mates, but he just doesn’t. He doesn’t want much of anything.

He doesn’t even care if the plane goes down right now and he dies.

That thought scares him. He’s never had thoughts like that. (He’s lying to himself, but Roger chooses to forget those times.)

He’s _happy_ , he’s happy to be alive, and he doesn’t want to die. (His thoughts scare him. He’s the most dangerous thing to himself right now.)

His band mates are playing scrabble about three feet away from him, and he’s not even scared of his own death. There’s something seriously wrong with him. He’s scared.

He doesn’t want to die, (but he wouldn’t care if he did) no, he isn’t like that, he’s _not_ suicidal. He’s not a weird crazy person with nothing better to do than plan their own death. He’s in his twenties, he’s successful and famous and rich and he’s playing with his band tomorrow and he’s happy. He really is.

(So why is he crying?)

Fuck, he’s crying. He’s actually such a pussy that he’s crying. The tears are getting faster, and it’s getting harder to breathe through them, but he’s quiet. He’s silent and he won’t worry the others. He’s not worth worrying about, he doesn’t deserve it.

Despite how hard he’s trying, the tears just come quicker and harder, and soon he’s gasping and sobbing, and he doesn’t know what happened. He can’t hear anything over the sound of his own sobs but he can feel a large pair of hands (Brian, he can tell that it’s Brian) on his shoulders. His eyes are closed, and all of his feelings of loneliness and dejection and anxiety and worthlessness are flooding out in a never ending stream of tears.

He’s on a plane, and yet he’s never felt lower.

He can hear a voice, it’s soft and soothing and beautiful. Freddie. Singing one of their songs, his brain automatically adds in the drum beat and he can hear the ghost of Brian’s guitar and John’s bass. Doing Alright. How appropriate.

He’s calming down, but the tears don’t stop, he can breathe properly and he can start to make out Freddie’s voice a little better.

He opens his eyes and sees the concerned faces of his best friends in front of him. Brian is the first one to talk.

“Are you alright?” A simple question that should be easy to answer. He want to say yes, but he knows that he’d be lying.

He shakes his head, he doesn’t trust his voice not to mess this up.

“Do you want to talk about it, darling?” He wishes he did. He wishes it were that easy to talk about the darkness tearing him up inside.

Again he shakes his head no.

“That’s okay,” Young, bright John. As the two youngest, they always stick together.

John sits beside him to cuddle him from one side, Freddie on the other, and Brian beside John.

Roger cuddles into their embrace, finally feeling secure and at peace with himself. It probably won’t go away, and he’ll definitely have to talk about it, but right now, everything is fine, and he drifts off to sleep hearing Freddie’s voice singing and Brian harmonising with him.

He drifts off to sleep on a plane headed to a concert, he can’t even remember where, and he’s finally feeling content-ish, for the first time in weeks. (Months (Years)).

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Drowse" by Queen.


End file.
